A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



ing to Nottinghamshire or Derbyshire I cannot say are the wolf, rein- 

 deer, horse and woolly rhinoceros. 



Although river gravels and alluvium occur at various places in the 

 Trent valley, they appear to have yielded few mammalian remains. 

 The Nottingham Museum possesses however several fine molar teeth 

 of the mammoth which have been obtained from the old alluvium 

 of the Trent valley, either in the course of street excavations in Not- 

 tingham itself, or by dredging in the bed of the river near the town. 



Since the foregoing was in type, I have received from the Rev. 

 T. B. Chamberlin a note on some mammalian remains, associated with a 

 number of species of land and freshwater shells obtained from the layer 

 above the peat in the valley between North and South Wheatley, near 

 Retford. Acccording to Mr. Chamberlin's determinations, the mam- 

 malian remains include the base of an antler of the roebuck (Capreo/us 

 capreolus), a horn-core of the extinct bison (Bison priscus), a portion of 

 the antler of the extinct Irish deer (Cervus giganteus), and several antlers 

 of red deer. The Irish deer antler has a basal girth of 20 inches ; the 

 brow-tine is 15! inches in length and 5 inches in girth ; and the portion 

 of the beam still remaining, which is broken off just below the palma- 

 tion, is 13 inches in length from above the origin of the brow-tine. 



Passing on to older formations, a considerable amount of interest 

 attaches to certain remains of plesiosaurians, or long-necked extinct 

 marine reptiles from the Lower Lias of the county preserved in the 

 British Museum. One of these is chiefly interesting on account of 

 having been discovered so long ago as the year 1719. It consists of a 

 slab of Lias limestone from Elston near Newark containing the im- 

 pression of the hinder part of the skeleton of a small plesiosaur, which 

 has been provisionally referred to the common P/esiosaurus dolichodlrus* 

 In the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for 1719* it was 

 regarded by its describer, William Stukeley, as probably representing 

 the remains of a crocodile or a cetacean, the existence of such a re- 

 markable group of reptiles as the plesiosaurians being at that time quite 

 unsuspected. The specimen was originally in the possession of the 

 Royal Society, by the council of which body it was presented to the 

 British Museum. 



The second specimen, which is from the Lower Lias near Granby, 

 is of importance on account of the comparative rarity of the species 

 (Eretmosaurus rugosus) to which it belongs. It was presented to the 

 British Museum by the Duke of Rutland in 1841, and consists of a 

 slab showing the lower aspect of the nearly entire skeleton, from which 

 however the skull is wanting. 3 It was described and figured by Sir R. 

 Owen (as P/esiosaurus rugosus) in his ' Liassic Reptilia.' 4 The genus 

 Eretmosaurus, it may be observed, is chiefly distinguished from the 

 typical P/esiosaurus by certain well marked differences in the form and 

 relations of the scapula and coracoid bones. 



i Cat. Fast. Rtpt. Brit. Mut. ii. 259. * pp. 936-8, pi. i. 



s See Cat. Pass. Reft. Brit. Mut. ii. 250. * Man. Pal. Soc. pt. iii. p. 34 (1865). 



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